


Once more, Another chance

by RawWriting



Series: Stony Tiny Bang 2018 [2]
Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, He gets AI, I mean, M/M, better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 19:13:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RawWriting/pseuds/RawWriting
Summary: Steve and Tony had a messy breakup. Steve tries to reconcile after the battle that reunites them, only to have to learn to love Tony in whole new ways. Ways that feel so much less, until they feel right again.Round 3 fill for TinyBang, 3 fills combined to make a larger story.Confession - Silver - Extremis





	Once more, Another chance

CONFESSION

The final battle of Iron Man as piloted by the Human Tony Stark, is messier than anyone thought it would be. Steve had called Tony, and everything that was, as always, unsaid between them choked him into taciturn answers kept short and clipped.

When the blast knocks Iron Man from the sky Steve admits he loses it a little. Tony is weak on the coms, fluttery voice terrifying Steve to the point of snapping “You can’t get out of talking to me by dying. You walk it off!” There is silence, and then, Iron man is flying back into battle. The leaden weight in Steve’s belly, the one that still is screaming that something is wrong, gets shoved aside. If Tony can bank and maneuver like that, he’s going to be fine.

That wasn’t like watching Bucky fall. Not at all. The battle is grueling, nearly a full twelve hours of fighting later, there is smoke and burning alien ships as the only light in the pitch black of the moonless night. Steve gets on Tony’s private channel, and he has decided, after everything, to swallow his pride. He can’t imagine what he would do if Tony died thinking Steve didn’t love him anymore. “Tony, look. I know, what I chose to hold back from you hurt you, and I am so sorry for that. That I didn’t trust you enough with the accords, that I made, a lot of decisions, you don’t agree with, is something that, I still believe was the only choice I could make, but I am also sorry I didn’t talk about them with you. You were, are, more than a friend to me.” Steve breathes out a heavy gusting sigh, “Look, I know it’s probably too little, too late, but, I still love you, Tony. I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but I meant it, when I told you I love you. I never stopped.”

“Steve… I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” Tony’s voice sounds distressed, and nothing like what it should for what he just said. Not anger, which he would deserve but something- “Tony, status report!” He barks it, running full speed towards the suit, which is walking, not flying. Steve’s gut swoops and he feels a growing horror, slapping his earpiece hard as he chokes out “We need a medic, north east by the two downed ships, man down I repeat” But he is close enough to see the hologram shaking it’s head in the suit.

It looks like Tony, but younger. No grey in his hair or lines around his eyes. No little smile lines permanently creasing his cheeks or worry lines making a seam between his eyebrows. Instead there is only aching sympathy and remorse, as he carries the unnaturally stiff form of the actual Tony. His head is curled forward as if resting on an invisible pillow, and his arms stay at unnatural angles, knees bent so one is not meeting the arm supporting it.

Steve feels faint and sick and like the world is falling out from under him. It is worse than the icy water, the way his heart freezes and he can’t breathe. He staggers forward, reaching for Tony, Tony who was flying, talking, just moments ago- “Steve, I am so, incredibly, sorry. He was gone shortly after that impact twenty minutes into the battle. The upload of his consciousness is completed, but since it was done in battle conditions, he, I, have not finished the integrations yet.”

Steve touches Tony’s cheek, tugging off the glove to stroke the long since cold flesh, that feels almost waxy over the rigid muscles underneath. Steve loses it at that, hugging his belly, bent over, tears and snot and other fluids mixing on his tongue as he screams his denial as he never let himself before, as he can only do now because of how Tony himself had helped him begin to recover, to embrace his emotions. Sam is there, and Bucky, and then there is a funeral to arrange. More for Steve, and the world, than for Tony, who tinkers in his lab and shamefully ducks his eyes when Steve storms off. Tony feels Steve’s upset that the emotional intelligence, the feelings, didn’t make the transfer. That he has nearly all of Tony’s knowledge but is, as Steve puts it, “A ghost, a pale after-image to the brilliant man that breathed life!”

Tony knows what happened. He doesn’t say it. That Tony chose not to upload that part of himself. A conscious choice, to not be hurt by the feelings he had anymore.

The story could have ended there, except in Tony’s will there is properties and bequeathments to them all. There is the Avengers Compound to Steve, there is also the guardianship of his “Life Model Decoy” though there is a joke about fucking him over in death that speaks to how bitterly drunk he was when it was written, the long and short of it is that until AI are able to be registered as beings, Tony now belongs to Steve.

SILVER

It’s hard at first. For both of them. Vision is a help. Tony makes himself look younger than Steve ever knew him as. Tells him to think of him as Tony’s son. Somehow, over the next two years, Steve deals with his grief. He learns to see Tony Jr, as just like Tony had suggested, Tony’s slightly autistic son.

There are moments when Steve looks at him, so sad and lost, that make Tony squirm and feel something like shame deep in what could be his belly if he ate. He makes a body for himself, a dozen tweaks, a hundred iterations, and finally he has most of the kinks worked out except for his lower legs and right hand.

Then Daisy comes into their lives. Daisy is a gift from Natasha, and the cat is, if anything, more of an abomination than Tony. It is part dog, and part cat, not a cat that acts like a dog, but some scientist’s bastardized attempt to play god. It’s a menace. It’s tiny but pounces with enough speed and force to destabilize Tony if he is not careful. The balance actuators improve by leaps and bounds. All puns intended.

Then, comes the day Tony won’t… can’t forget. The day Steve, out in the outdoor training field with the menace, makes Tony’s digital heart race. Tony had forgotten what love felt like. He had forgotten what that emotion made of his mind, until he was staring at Steve. Until he was listening to the giggles and chortles and “Daisy, sweetheart, no, come on”s and watching this supersoldier be bullied into allowing himself to be bathed by a twenty pound cat-dog. The way his face lights up, and he squints, nearly winking as the long rough tongue swipes his face, black tail wagging high in the air. Tony laughs along, the sound as new as the feeling, and Steve’s breath catches.

When their eyes meet, it’s as if Steve knows he can feel again, can see it somehow, because he flushes red, and settles Daisy down to walk cautiously over to Tony. The built hand, covered in it’s special synthetic skin to feel human in every way, meet’s Steve’s and they hold hands for a long moment. Touching and being touched. Staring at each other.

Tony remembers everything that was uploaded a year before the battle. The emotions, all of them. He squeezes Steve’s hand in his, and says softly “I remember I love you, but I also remember I was livid with you.” Steve is choked up, those teary blue eyes blinking hard as the big goober tries not to cry. “If your anger is the price of having your love, then I am glad to have the chance to grovel and make up for what happened.”

Tony has no need to swallow, but the habit is older than this body, than him as an entity outside the meat sack he was born to the first time. He swallows and says “Yeah, well, you can start by doing all those dates we never got to. Something about watching my shows with me and drawing me like one of your french girls? I am thinking, new body, new start. Let’s learn to love again. Together. Another chance at happiness.”

EXTREMIS

Steve seems to take this idea and run with it. The days blend and merge, and over the next two years, Tony is taken on a hundred dates around the compound. Almost every one made by Steve, from picnics, to river rafting, to hiking, to dozens of drawing sessions, to eventually, kissing, and making love, under the stars.

Five years after the first date, Steve finally takes Tony off of the compound. They both know the risks, of the press, of being seen as not just a robot. But Tony trusts Steve again, has learned to. Has had to. He brings Tony deep into the woods, well off the beaten track to a place that looks, Idylic. Perfect. The house is white with two stories, steps leading up to a door that looks like it was carved by hand, with two large panes of glass. One with a shield and reactor overlayed, the other with cursive script of an Irish blessing on a home. Steve leans in and gathers Tony close, the younger looking human based android much smaller than his original frame, now fully human looking and feeling in every way.

“I had the team help me make it. I know, we’ve made the compound into a home… but it’s… not the same. You deserve- a house, a family. And here- we can have that. The retirement we both earned. Tony, do you want to be my husband? To share a home with me, to make a family with me? To be equals, with no large secrets between us?” Tony’s eyes water, the system reacting to emotional cues far better than anticipated, and he sniffs loudly and quite obscenely. “Of course, you meatball.” He turns to tug Steve down into a kiss, both of them laughing when Daisy merfs loudly from the porch.

Tony laces their fingers together and drags Steve into their home, into the future they never could have had before, so free of media, free of the world outside their happiness and home. Where all that matters is love, joy, and forgiveness.

**Author's Note:**

> Editing? I don't know her.   
> See an error, say something. 
> 
> When you lack spoons but can't sleep anyways, post your awful tumblr fics on AO3 without any editing. What could go wrong?


End file.
